


petals on my tongue

by sidechick



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Ben Solo, Bisexual Rey (Star Wars), Blood, Body Horror, Coughing, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Hospitals, Injury, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Poe Dameron/Finn, Past Rey/Paige Tico, Romance, Social Media, Vomiting, flower coughing disease, hanahaki, now with 100 percent more opportunities for dramatic Victorian-style coughing, that said this is lighthearted believe it or not, this is a modern day/sw universe mashup
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-20 17:58:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15539835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidechick/pseuds/sidechick
Summary: “What happened?!”“They decided to scrape it.”It’s as awful as it sounds. Pulmoflorid surgeons go in and takeeverything. The Holocube article has a photo of a patient with brutal median sternotomy scar; in some cases, flowers spread deeper, into abdominal cavity or even heart - each require corresponding invasive procedures. But physical marks are not the worst part for survivors, seeing as how more than just a physical manifestation of a feeling gets extracted.***Rey, an engineering student, is anonymously creating sculptures - with a spotty track record when it comes to pleasing the fickle tastes of her online audience. (Good thing a loyal subscriber kyloren gets what's what.) Now, on top of the criticism, she has to power through a recent breakup. Maybe Finn's cousin finally visiting after years and years MIA will provide a sufficient distraction.





	petals on my tongue

**Author's Note:**

> **Hanahaki Disease** is a fictional disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings, or when the victim dies. It can be cured through surgical removal, but when the infection is removed, the victim's romantic feelings for their love also disappear.
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> I am back, and, as a bonus, I bring with me a new story. It'll serve as an outlet while I finish [**Mercy**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13464045)! :D
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> Some repurposed terminology for this AU:  
> Intranet - Instagram  
> Holocube - Wikipedia
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> As always: **please, mind the tags!**

All of the hurt you've been hiding away  
Cuts me at once like a switchblade  
Take every stab you can take  
And I'll give it to ya, give it to ya

I always knew that you'd cut me someday  
I fell in love with a switchblade  
But I know that you did the same  
So I'll give it to ya, give it to ya

\- _LP, Switchblade_

Finn is kinda thirsty – his Blue Milk bottle stands long drained – and bored with Gundark Trainer, but the Ratts Race disk is all the way out in the TV room, where Ben’s jerk friends are. Well, some aren’t complete assholes. Poe and Jessika are okay. But Hux and Phasma also came, and those two are the worst. Plus, since it’s Ben’s birthday, nobody dares to change his god-awful heavy metal music. It blares on maximum, vibrates through the whole house, and Finn doesn’t want to risk his perfect hearing.

Eventually, though, the need for toilet outweighs everything else. And after, since he already left Aunt Leia’s office…

Outside is much louder, of course. Main lights are off everywhere – except kitchen – in favor of Auntie’s mood lighting and a red-tinted Halloween projector Ben dug up from the garage this morning. Tiny mynocks spin lazily across walls. Finn almost loses it at the cafeteria clique-ness in the lounge: Hux and Poe hold court each in their separate nook. A mix of debate and track are pretentiously failing at pool with the former, while lacrosse team watches the latter swap spit with his girlfriend. No CDs as far as the eye can see.

Finn, largely unnoticed, does a quick swipe near the console stand. Mountains of chips and a half-raided pizza box yield nothing. Someone snuck beer either in or out of Uncle Han’s basement fridge, and there’s now Ben’s incense stick in an empty can smoldering happily away. Ben himself is nowhere in sight.

“Guys, have you seen Ben?” He asks after gathering enough courage to approach Poe’s cohort.

“Oh! Hey, kid!” The guy smiles at him sunnily despite the nature-defying fusion that’s happening between his and the girlfriend’s anatomy. “Sorry, not for a while now. Maybe kitchen?”

“I thought he was out in the back yard,” Jessika shrugs to their left, “reciting poetry at the moons.”

Little is more terrifying than a cackle of Seniors laughing hyena-style, so Finn quickly backs away. Hux and She-Hulk are glaring daggers at their opposition just as mid-song pause lets a noise travel downstairs. No one picks it up, too preoccupied by not being friendless losers, but Finn’s near the steps. He follows the lead to upstairs bathroom and presses an ear to the door.

A guy is blowing chunks inside.

“I’m telling Auntie you got shitfaced!” Finn promises, gleeful, and tries the handle. “Unless you find Ratts Race for me and add ten creds!” The door suddenly buckles under his weight: the dead bolt wasn’t pushed in properly and slipped its notch. Triumphant grin already in place, Finn bursts in.

His eyes adjust pretty quickly and he stops squinting. There’s, predictably, a pool of undigested beer-and-pizza vomit in the middle of the room, equal parts over tile and mat – like someone didn’t manage to reach the toilet in time. But it’s a weird pinky hue along one side, and beyond that side, leading up to the body wrapped around the bowl, is a string of bloody splashes. They are very red, almost fake neon on the creamy marble.

“Is this a joke?” Finn demands in a weak voice. His heart, paused without his knowledge, starts hammering away twice as fast. “Your stupid pranks suck!”

A horrible wheeze emanates from Ben – and it’s him, fallen to his knees, – a sound of someone fighting for their breath. Finn’s eyes are burning. All at once, his legs are unsteady and palms numb, and a hot wave rolls over him, prickling at the armpits. He avoids the vomit and runs to his cousin’s side. Ben’s black t-shirt looks wet and is stuck to his back. So is his ponytail. One large hand – Dad says Ben’s like a Loth-wolf puppy on adult paws – with familiar leather cuff around the wrist is shaking, clawing at the porcelain. Heaving spasms shake his whole frame, and they seem far more violent than simple vomiting would cause. Finn grabs his cousin’s bony shoulders and lifts, turns him the best he can. Ben’s head hangs from his neck, chin flash against his chest.

The toilet bowl is completely red inside. The water is maroon, and the walls are covered in brighter splashes with streaks trickling down. The image is immediately burned into Finn’s brain. There’s also something else, a weirdly shaped lump in the drain; and it moves in a springy way, flops over under its own weight… 

It’s a lily.

In full bloom, the thick petals are waxy – film of blood bursts in places over the surface to reveal shockingly white patches. Ben’s face from eyebrows and down, to the neck, is all red, and the t-shirt front is just as soaked as the back. Only it’s blood instead of sweat. Some stupid band’s bleached logo that looks like a bunch of vertical sticks is half-saturated with it like dye.

“Benny!” Finn rasps, childhood nickname jumping naturally to his tongue from a deep place of darkness and nightmares and reassuring if annoyed presence by his side. 

His cousin’s barely breathing anymore; his lips are turning blue – visible even under all the slickness. The clawing hands are starting to get limp. He’s trying to cough, stomach contracting, but the oxygen won’t come through a clearly blocked airway. Only the tiniest trickle makes it, creating a high whistle as it does. Suddenly, Ben looks at Finn with watering brown eyes that draw clearer stripes through the filth on his skin. Contrary to the initial suspicion, he seems sober. There’s fear in his gaze, but no urgency; it’s dull and practiced. He tries to make a flopping gesture towards his mouth.

Finn’s fingers are smaller, more nimble. He has no time to think before they’re reaching between Ben’s lips and yellow-with-blood teeth to wriggle past his tongue. He’s floating away from the situation a little, maybe, but whatever, it helps. It keeps his own stomach settled when he discovers a non-flashy smooth surface pressing against his fingertips. Ben’s mouth is constricting on reflex around Finn’s hand, desperate for air. Finally, after some coaxing, Finn pinches and pulls. With what little’s left in his lungs, Ben howls, and it’s muffled, but no less devastating for it. The thing Finn’s pulling at doesn’t let, doesn’t let – until a revolting wet crunch from deep inside his cousin’s chest rips free. Finn’s hand flies out with it, knuckles scraped on Ben’s teeth, and out goes a half-open lily bud on a stem. After a second of astonished observation, it unfolds fully in Finn’s grip with a crisp sound.

Finn shrieks and hurls it away as if it was a kouhun. Sickly-sounding cough and desperate gasps fill the room, bouncing between tiled walls. A deeper colored, wine-toned gooey clump pours from Ben’s mouth, and he starts to slump. Finn goes to catch him, but, even as lanky as he is, Ben weights a ton, so Finn mostly just helps his cousin to the floor in slow motion. He rotates Ben’s body so he’s on his side, to prevent chocking, and by that time the guy’s unconscious. Badly, but at least he’s breathing now.

Pulse a thunder roaring through his head, Finn jumps up, almost goes face-first as he slips on the vomit puddle, and manages to romp down the stairs.

The party is going unperturbed. Finn smashes the light switch and tears the boombox cord out of the socket as he beelines to the phone. A chorus of “what the fuck!”-s and “hey, come on!”-s crowds around him as he dials his home number with a trembling finger. He doesn’t know how to reach the theatre Aunt and Uncle went to.

Someone makes an urgent noise. “Wait, is that blood?” Sounds like Jessika.

“Hiya,” Dad says in Finn’s ear – so calm and friendly, so far away.

“Ben’s unconscious!” Finn yells, and he doesn’t care that he sounds like a baby or a girl or whatever. He spins to look at the ceiling, hoping to see his cousin through it somehow. Instead, he sees Hux abandoning his cue and hopping upstairs two steps at a time. “He’s been _coughing_! He has _flowers_!”

The room is drowning in shocked silence while Dad instructs him: “Finn, listen to me. You’ll end this call and call 9-1-1 right away, okay? You’ll tell them what you just told me, and you’ll name the address to Aunt Leia’s house. Do you remember the address?”

“I-” He’s going to cry, his eyes are burning. “I don’t-”

Poe takes the phone out of his hand gently, but firmly, and picks up the conversation with a serious: “Mr Skywalker, sir! It’s Poe Dameron. Yes, sir. Yes-”

Finn’s hand is now empty. It’s covered in blood, which has already started to seep into his life lines, turning them darker, as dark as the back of his hand. A little bean-like yellow pollen pod is stuck to his thumb.

***

***

Finn and Poe are already making out under the _Cantina_ sign when Rey peeks around the corner. She’s approaching straight from the workshops side of campus today, unlike her usual from-the-library misleading route, so there’s little chance of the couple noticing her preemptively. The false trail is only not getting laid in because of her plan to ambush Rose. Rose is, no doubt, trying to avoid this precise situation by making a hook around the dining hall right about now – which will bring her straight into Rey’s arms.

Sunset is smoldering out of oranges towards dusty purples, and the air is getting a bit chilly. Rey props up a lamppost – bulb blinking to turn on full-force soon – with her back as she waits. She puts her hands in her bomber’s pockets. A smooth edge of her phone is as good suggestion on how to kill time as any.

She has a lot of haters on Intranet. Like, _a lot_. Her installations tend to provoke intense emotional response in people. Which safely cements them as art, according to her Aesthetics professor. Who said the response has to be positive? It took fifteen minutes tops to walk from the workshops to here, and already there are _cancer art_ and _I’m just hate-following by this point_ in abundance under her latest piece. At least no one is trying to unreasonably report her account – small mercies.

On the brighter note, kyloren has also let himself known.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness,” he wrote. “It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”* Getting a hackneyed quote copy-pasted at her should be cringy, but Rey smiles. kyloren gets her stuff. He always manages to reflect on exactly the point she tried to convey. With a too-dark spin here and there, sure, but still. He understands her loneliness; by sharing it, perhaps. Honestly, she would’ve continued posting her projects no matter what, but it’s nice to have an accepting, appreciative audience member.

“@kyloren Got it in one,” she types back – just in time to witness Rose exiting a literal bush. Rose’s ankle gets stuck in the hedge at the same moment she notices Rey, and she starts jumping, one-legged. She’s also fighting the twigs while glaring and screaming: “I told Pae-Pae! I warned you both! I’m not losing any friendships over your stupid breakup!”

It didn’t happen yesterday; over a week has passed, actually. It’s the first time, though, that Rey sees Rose after ending a relationship with Paige. She’s been too busy welding her customary post-getting-dumped sculpture to hang out. 

“Okay, okay!” Rey placates. She puts the phone away, walks over, and tags her friend out by the forearms. “We cool?”

They almost lost a sneaker in the process, but it held. Rose is pink in the cheeks and seems more disgruntled than upset. “Yeah, we cool. My rule is, I’m not discussing my sister with you and vice versa.” Her unbuttoned woolen coat needs adjustment. She blows her green-apple smelling bangs back in place and raids her purse to produce a tube. “Here, put some on. Your palms are like sandpaper.”

Rey accepts the hand cream gratefully. The life of an engineering major slash secret sculptor is not gentle on one’s hands. Hers are rough and covered in cuts and burns in various stages of healing. Not to mention the absent manicure. She’s self-conscious about that, but what can you do if not embrace it. Rey embraces a lot about herself; she might not be effortlessly stylish like Rose, or sophisticated like Paige, or charismatic like Jessika. But! She’s… Rey, which is good enough. She knows there are attractive facets to her.

The cream smells kinda coniferous, the way woods behind Maz’s house do. Rey inhales familiar scent deeply while it seeps into her skin. But as she does, a droplet of saliva goes down the wrong pipe, and a coughing fit overtakes her. She starts tearing up and is forced to stand there dumbly, fanning her own face. When her eyes cut to Rose, the girl stares back in absolute horror. Oh, right. Fuck. 

“Choked,” Rey rasps, pointing at her throat, and raises both hands over her head on instruction. Rose goes on tiptoes and takes the tube still clutched in one. Cream bagged and coughing subdued, she side-hugs Rey and mumbles into the polysynth fabric over her shoulder: “I thought- maybe-”

“We haven’t been dating quite long enough to develop feelings that deep.”

“We, though, have been friends long enough. I love you, even if you won’t be my sister-in-law. So don’t die, please.”

“I love you, too. I’ll try, I promise.”

 _Cantina_ ’s air carries fried onion smell and warmth wafting from the kitchen, envelopes numerous chatty patrons and puts color on waitresses’ cheeks. Once they settle in a booth, Finn is so wired he’s practically jumping out of his skin every time the doors open. Most people in his life know about his cousin, about that cousin being a midnight call – that trill that makes stomachs drop and brings no good news. On Rey’s watch, the guy called from his Jakku tour, from an emergency room (twice), a police station, a rehab center, and, on an especially memorable occasion, from a roof’s edge. Poe, usually the one with zero tolerance for toxic influences, never went on his habitual sermon about Finn’s excessive kindness, so Rey figures there is more to the story. She never pries. Because of basic human decency, for one, and, additionally-

“So, Ben had flowers when he was a teenager.”

Well, because Finn has no filter.

“Holy shit, no way!” Rose gasps, loud even over music and ambient chatter. Many have “a friend of a friend” with flowers, but scarcely anyone knows a sufferer in person. She leans over the table on her elbows, sincerely concerned for this guy she has never met. Maybe that scare earlier added to her intensity.

“Yeah. They hospitalized him during his eighteenth birthday party. The actual date was still several days away and he came in already unconscious, so Aunt and Uncle technically had custody.”

“What happened?!”

Rey can make a solid guess.

“They decided to scrape it.”

It’s as awful as it sounds. Pulmoflorid surgeons go in and take _everything_. The Holocube article has a photo of a patient with brutal median sternotomy scar; in some cases, flowers spread deeper, into abdominal cavity or even heart - each require corresponding invasive procedures. But physical marks are not the worst part for survivors, from what Rey gathers. Seeing as how more than just a physical manifestation of a feeling gets extracted.

Finn, brown face ashen with worry, engages in a heavy stare of sheer trepidation with Rose, while Poe rubs his boyfriend’s shoulder, looking glum. There’s a complicated milkshake in front of the couple, prophylactically ordered to keep spirits high. Poe sighs, wary and suddenly older in the dimmed light of overhead lamps, silver needles on his temples more noticeable than usual.

“Ben’s been… struggling since,” he says. “Avoiding his parents. He went through a lot. We rarely crossed paths after, and he hasn’t been seen at all for over two years now.”

“Wait, you’ve met?” Rey accuses, even though – why wouldn’t he, Finn’s partner of four years, meet the relatives.

“Yeah. Same high school,” Poe takes an unsteady breath. “We used to be close friends; it’s how I know Finn, actually.”

That’s… intimate. Family-like. “Should Rose and I even be here? Maybe we should leave?”

Finn shakes his head with such vigor, it’s a miracle it doesn’t take off flying into a nearby fireplace, like a doll in that one viral vid. “He said he’ll just “come hang with us”, I don’t want to scare him away with too much intimacy or something, so you stay right where you are!” That makes sense; Finn does have a tendency to get intense in socially sensitive situations. His mouth runs the fuck away from him. “I only wanted to warn you. Ben has also always been… a bit of a dick? So, be gentle, please? Or understanding? Don’t mention… anything.”

“Who was it, do you know?” Rose whispers, eyebrows distorted in sympathy.

Poe and Finn consult through a silent look, and the latter answers: “He never told, and it obviously never came to mediation. But we think it was his classmate, Hux.”

“They got really close that summer-”

Rey registers a movement in her peripheral vision and glances up to a tall man around Poe’s age soundlessly advancing towards their booth. None of them even heard the bell this time, too engrossed in gossip. The man is black-clad head to toe and has a weighty gait that falls faintly heavier on one leg. Finn doesn’t notice since his back is to the entrance, but the man notices Finn, dark eyes zeroed in on his neatly trimmed nape. As the newcomer stops by their table, Rey finds her head upturned all the way back to fit his height into her perception field. He slaps Finn’s shoulder with one pocketed hand, half of the unbuttoned short coat flapping after it.

With Finn frozen mid-gape, Presumably-Ben squeezes to sit beside him, folding his body endlessly and moving both men deeper into the booth with his hip. He’s… big, for lack of better term: not only tall, but broad in the shoulders, with thick arms and wide palms he folds on the tabletop. His face is comprised of generous features and dotted with moles, and he’s so pale, the shadows under his eyes are vaguely violet due to the transparency of skin. Makes sense – Finn was adopted by his dads at age five.

Speaking of, Finn works through initial shock and squeals with his lips pressed together to squelch the intensity. Confirmed-Ben is then encompassed in an enthusiastic embrace and takes all ministrations in stride as Finn rocks them and Poe reaches over to clap his shoulder violently. The couple beams in unison, and Ben tucks his chin in as if to hide his face; the longish brunette hair framing it in messy almost-waves curtains some of the expression away.

The moment is soon over.

“This is Rey,” Poe points out, still smiling, with one elbow on the table to lean in and see his friend better, “and Rose. They’re in the same year as Finn, Mechanical and Civil, respectively. And that’s Ben. He’s dumb.”

Ben’s focus switches without a smile, even if his lips slant, and he waves with two fingers. Rey isn’t sure what her and Rose’s faces showcase, but instead of empty greetings the man says: “Ah. I see Finn spilled the whole sob story already.”

“Fuck!” His cousin is mortified. “I’m sorry, I know, I’m terrible! I’m sorry! Please, Ben, don’t leave. It’s just, I can never keep anything in, and Rose and Rey are totally cool, I would trust them with my life, and I really wanted for everyone to get along-”

“I am the type of a person that goes better with a preamble, I suppose,” Ben concedes, interrupting the verbal vomit with dark amusement in his voice. He shows no sign of getting ready to flee.

Rey hurries to reassure: “He just warned us so we would be more sensitive. No unnecessary nitty-gritty details or morbid fascination.” Well, almost.

“I could tolerate,” Ben says quietly while holding her gaze captive, “some morbid fascination.”

Rose is quick on the ready, despite Poe’s attempts to stop the questioning. “Did it hurt?”

“While it lasted, yes. I don’t remember the operation. After, it hurt like any other scar would’ve. Not as much as getting shot in the leg.”

Rey tries to swallow the words down, but they tear free: “What kind of flower was it?”

“White lilies,” Ben says. Finn is silently watching; the smile lines that frame his mouth are more prominent in distress and make his whole face look tired. 

Conversation turns lighter with the next topic chosen, steered by Poe towards discussing orders and reminiscing on favorite childhood foods. “Not starving” and “regular meals” are downer answers, so Rey concocts some lie about ice cream. Puffy upholstery seam is a calming texture under her fingertips, tickling them with tiny bumps of even stitching. Paige loved sitting here, cozying up to Rey; it would have been the creamy skin of her thigh under Rey’s touch just a week ago. Could she have grown impossibly closer to the feeling? Until flowers bloomed inside her? White lilies, a symbol of innocence – common for first love…

Ben is so grown, so solid. It’s hard to imagine fragile petals curling out from between his dark-pink lips.

“You two are still as disgusting as ever, I’m happy to say,” the man observes, pointing at his cousin with a garlic fry from a small basket in front of him. Finn proceeds to snuggle up to Poe with a smug grin.

“You think this is disgusting?” Rose huffs. “They’re sober, for one. For two, you should’ve been around for this last week. My sister is on a rebound, fucking everything with boo-oops,” she switches smoothly and stuffs her face with a trio of mini donuts pulled off Finn’s cocktail straw. 

Rey’s own well-chewed fry tastes bitter going down. Ben raises an eyebrow at the uncomfortable pause dominating the booth momentarily, until all of a sudden a biting remark comes from one table over:

“ _I_ think it’s disgusting.”

While her friends gawp towards the voice in synchronized horrified amusement, Rey’s eyes seem to be stuck on Ben. It’s geyser-like, the way the calm, reserved façade cracks to let a searing and dark intensity free. The man’s features become sharp, almost predatory in a fraction of a second. Energy tangibly ripples through his very being; his fists flex and his neck swells up, causing a vein to pop on his forehead. She feels pretty much the way he looks. The mousy asshole who decided to comment is about to regret his decision soon.

Because Rey is going to head-smash him into a table corner repeatedly, of course. But it’s nice to know she has backup.

Before anything can reach the boiling point, though, the waitress appears. “Honestly?” Her words drip with indignation and the way she clutches an empty metal tray is weirdly menacing. “How do you think this will go down in our Prime Pride Partner establishment?” Behind her, a campus security officer turns on her high chair, cup of coffee in hand and face skeptical. A rainbow flag over the bar is a good finishing touch to the picture.

“It’s fine, Tha-Thna,” Poe laughs kindly while making a “calm down” gesture. “I can deal with this-”

The asshole (after reassessing the situation with quickly sobering eyes) grabs his chicken roll and storms outside, grumbling. As many patrons applaud or whoop a “good riddance”, Ben escapes the booth and likewise storms away. His trajectory is opposite, leads to the back door he’s been facing, so maybe no murder is on the menu tonight.

“Ben-” Finn starts just to be silenced by Rey’s quick: “Stay, I’ll go; I need some fresh air.” Her friend seems dubious, but nods anyway.

“Back” exit is, in reality, a side-exit that leads out to a clean alley between _Cantina_ and its corporate coffee chain neighbor. There’s garbage, all sorted into different containers for recycling, there’s steam from an AC unit ventilator that smells strongly of vanilla. There’s a cat, but it’s collared and pampered. Ben is sitting on a swiped curb near a drainpipe, beyond the reach of an orange light rectangle the glass door casts, and chews on his anger uselessly. His elbows are on his knees, and the lock of hands between them squeezes and relaxes in turns.

“I just care a lot,” he chokes out into the night air. It’s exceedingly colder now that the sun has set, and Ben’s words are a half-translucent puff that mild wind dilutes into nothing.

“Yeah, I can see that.” Rey sighs heavily, flopping beside him, and winces when hard concrete meets her thighs. As cold seeps through the jeans, all of Maz’s lectures about UTIs come alive in her head. “Same. Also, I needed a break.”

“Yeah, I caught that.” Ben turns a bit, eyes downcast. “You’re the one who sent Rose’s sister on a rebound?”

Rey hides her fingers in the bomber pockets and hugs herself with the unzipped halves. “It’s the other way around, if anything,” she says.

“You gay?”

“Bi.”

“O-o-oh, a fellow unicorn.” Ben’s wide hand is then presented to her for a fist bump. It’s massive, smallest knuckle the size of Rey’s largest one, with cool-to-the-touch skin. “We should drink to that.”

“Maybe.”

The following silence is not uncomfortable, except maybe to the not-stray cat whose space they’re invading. Ben stops the incessant jaw-clenching and foot-shuffling, sniffs. “They still think it was Hux?” His hair sways with the nod towards the door. Now he’s looking at Rey again, leaning back a little to see better in the limited space between them, and it’s a quiet, assured thing. Like he’s measuring her up and likes what he sees. Rey’s face goes slack with surprise at the guess. “Yeah… I’m getting, it wasn’t?”

“No. We had become close friends that year, true, but that’s only because I whined to him about my “crush” constantly. He never knew how serious it was.” Ben’s eyes smile first, mirth bunching and creasing the skin under them, and only then the mouth follows. She feels like she passed some test. There’s a twinkle of mischief in his gaze as he confesses: “It was Poe.”

Rey’s head and chest halt into staticky blankness before the first gets filled by buzzing and the second – by booms. “What the fuck!” She half-shouts, voice immediately dropped to a hissing whisper. She turns to check if the door’s still closed, irrational fear of being overheard taking over. “Why are you telling me this?!” What ‘s the appropriate response in such situation? Feeling sad? Upset? Protective?

Ben appears neither of those things, smile escalating into a laugh – soundless at first, louder soon. “I just felt like someone should know. And I figured you care about Finn too much to tell.”

“Never! Can you even imagine!”

“I can. Very well. Have been dreading it for years, seen all the nightmares.”

“But… Poe?”

A chill overtakes Rey, making her shiver. She raises her shoulders to shield the neck. Above, uneven sickle of their larger moon, Dantooine, is fully visible and is customarily followed by its roof-obscured smaller sibling, Tatooine. Below, there’s a tiny milky-white seashell trapped in the asphalt nearby. She studies it in her astonishment at the revelation. Ben, even the angry one from several minutes ago, is nothing like the mess of a person she conjured in her head. 

“Yeah,” he shrugs nonchalantly. “That’s fair. I don’t even know why, really. He was an asshole in high school and had the worst goatee ever. Brought his new girlfriend to my birthday party, too. I thought I would die.”

“Almost did.”

“True enough.” Ben slaps his knees. “Okay, it’s time to go get that drink. If you’re ready?”

The switch is, frankly, sudden as fuck. Rey gapes a little, befuddled. But there was enough fresh air inhaled on her part, so. “Shit, man. Yeah, let’s go. I really need it now.”

She hates the awkward fumbling recent acquaintances cause, the yet-to-be-established physical boundaries of new relationships. To prevent helping hands from happening, Rey gets up quickly, in time with Ben, and grabs the drainpipe beside her for stability. Because universe enjoys nothing more than shoving good intentions up people’s asses, the metal turns out to be corroded somewhere down its length. Rey’s weight was all it needed to snap in half, and the lower one succumbs to gravity. Escaping from under her palm, it promptly collapses; draws an ark through the air with its rusted end. The oops part is, final curve of said ark overlaps somewhat with Ben’s face.

It all goes down – literally – in a second. The pipe lands, and loud clanging scares the hoarse cat away. Ben flinches reflexively at first, but stands his ground even as a wound opens across his face from forehead diagonally down, like a capricious artist crossing out some clumsy design with red marker. Blood swells, brims, and finally spills over in a disturbingly lively waterfall.

The vivid picture catches up to Rey at once as if someone poured a tab of hot, heavy goo on _her_ head. She blinks in mortification, a radiating sun of shame she apparently swallowed trying to sear itself free through her ribcage; it causes nausea so strong her joints start to ache. She grabs Ben’s lapel, lightning-fast, clutches for dear life and screams: 

“Holy shit!!”

The irony of the fact that her trying to prevent this exact contact earlier is what caused the situation in the first place is lost behind a veil of shock. Ben returns the look blankly. Fuck, being touched by a person who just _piped him in the face_ is probably the last thing he wants!

But, sparing Rey further panic, strange serenity of his features gets creased by the forehead blood flooding the eye underneath. It has to be squeezed shut, and the movement disturbs the whole injury. Ben hisses through the pain that finally registered somewhere in his strange brain. It probably suffers a lot from the lack of oxygen or the difference in atmospheric pressure or something – the guy’s excessively tall. As for the cheek blood and its downstairs neighbor, jawline blood, they are now dripping down in warm blobs to land on Rey’s deathgrip fist.

“Holy shit!!” She repeats and starts dragging her victim inside.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He sounds… amused? What?! “Bet that lawsuit had been hanging up there waiting to happen for a long time, huh?”

She can barely hear. Every horrible workshop incident she ever witnessed adds to the anxiety. The pipe’s rusted flaky end falls in her mind’s eye on technicolor loop with flashing neon TETANUS for background. She probably spewed it out loud, because Ben barks a laugh. “No worries, they keep our shots up to date. No tetanus for me.”

“Holy shit!!” Great minds think alike: Finn is out of his sit and with them instantly, face ashen. “Did that homophobe attack you?! Did you get into a fight?! Poe told you we could handle it-”

“It was me,” Rey confesses, eyes already burning.

Her friend’s dark irises acquire a surrounding white band each: “You got into a fight with _Rey_?!”

There’s a resigned exhalation behind her.

The next fifteen minutes are pure chaos. Overarching mood is raucous and righteous, fed by the dim atmospheric lighting. What _Cantina_ heard and witnessed collectively doesn’t add up to a good look for the chicken roll asshole. Campus security officer tries, in quick succession, go after the presumed perpetrator, take statements, call an ambulance, and, having finally detangled the entire absurd story, contain public outrage. Ambiguously drunk Biomed Juniors rally, threatening to either start a petition or grab for pitchforks, while their Physics peers are full-on out for blood. Rose tries to suffocate Ben with the entire content of their booth’s napkin dispenser until he takes the wad away from her; Poe and Tha-Thna arrange for a car and try to locate the first aid kit. Finn is beside himself.

Rey feels awful. Her hands shake as she rinses the red off them. She tries to help, but all that comes out of it are several painful tabletop corner bruises on her thighs, obtained while running uselessly from one cluster of people to another. Turbulent current of the crowd finally washes her ashore at the bar, where she decides to take a moment to gather herself and breathe. Strategize on the apology or something. What kind of fruit basket says, “please don’t hate me, I am mortified and also broke”, again?..

There’s a tap on her shoulder, and she turns around to find Ben standing there. He’s intermediately covered in blood both fresh and crusted, soaked tissues with unsullied white corners stuck to the worst of it. At least his eye has been washed out, seeing once again. Some kind soul procured a plastic crab claw clip to keep his hair out of the mess, and without black obscuring the view she can see his ears are as generously portioned as the rest of him.

“I am _so_ sorry!” She blurts.

He thrusts a hand her way. It’s a shot glass. The drink’s familiar, her friend through many nights and a local favorite: deceptively sweet liquor topped with a miniature ice cream cone, overturned wafer-up. It’s actually called-

“Unicorn!” Ben proclaims. He’s very calm, with a faint hint of amusement. Isn’t he in pain?! Once more, with feeling: holy shit. She probably gave him a concussion or it’s shock and he’s tripping on adrenaline right now. This is it. I broke Finn’s cousin, she thinks, resigned, while her body accepts the offering on autopilot. “Though if you think about it, it should be bi-nicorn, technically. Right? Here.” He carefully scoops the ice cream from his own shot – ridiculous thing even tinier in his fingers – and sticks it atop hers beside the one that’s already there. She lets it happen, hand with drink in it bobbing under minute pressure. Melted edges and pushed out liquor glide in viscous lines down the glass sides and her freshly cleaned fingers. Ben adds: “Ice cream’s your favorite food, right?”

“Wha-” Wow. He remembered that, how attentive. And that’s a complete lie, so she’s also a liar. What a night. “I mean, yeah?” There’s a telling clink against her glass and he downs the shot faster than she can say, “You shouldn’t be drinking during medical emergency!”

“Don’t sweat it,” he says. His brown eyes are warm, and the fact deepens her shame for whatever reason. “Head injuries usually look worse than they are. It’s not your fault, alright? Just an accident.” He stamps the emptied glass on the bar and turns towards the tables to whistle sharply. It’s so loud, cake cases start vibrating. “Listen up, people! Here’s what’s going to happen-”

***

In the end, it’s funny how they forgot Ben’s a soldier who has seen active combat and is trained to act efficiently in stressful situations.

***

ER lobby smells nice, of lemon furniture polish layered atop the standard medicinal sterility. It’s toasty inside, central heat already on for schools and hospitals, as well as pretty empty. Tuesday is not really the party day for most students. They have a guy with unnaturally bent finger for company, and a lady bleeding from her leg, but that’s the extent of it. Dry buzzing lamplight is the only source of irritation here.

“Yeah, still waiting,” Poe reports dutifully into the phone. His voice is gentle, but the accompanying expression doesn’t match. He brushes his tangled curly hair away from the face once, twice. “No, not bleeding out. Doing fine.”

Only he and Rey went with Ben, Finn declared too agitated to tag along and Rose bent on getting her friend home. Ben, out of courtesy, actually wanted Rey to leave as well, but she feels responsible and is determined to see things through. So as he lounges in a chair, pressing cold tissue-wrapped soda can against his eye, Rey is helping to fill out necessary forms. Apparently, the guy has just received lodging and knows his own address and phone number about as well as Rey does. Rummaging through someone else’s wallet and looking at cards is pretty uncomfortable, but Ben can’t really see well with his injury, plus the blood drips on paper every time he tries to hunch over it.

“Nice neighborhood you’re in,” the chatter simply happens when Rey’s nervous, it’s Finn’s influence. “I have an interview there; it’s a callback, so I’ve been before. Lots of trees, very cute.”

Ben replies by humming. The sound makes her stop and look him, biting her lip, but he says nothing and there’s nothing to add. Pretty stupid. Okay, back to work.

In relative quiet the scratchy pen sounds almost deafeningly loud. Rey reaches the pulmoflorid section on the form and crosses appropriate boxes hesitantly from what was revealed during the evening: history of, extracted, age, type. Below, they’re enquiring about current medications. Ben spells the names for her one by one, three total, raising voice to be heard over Poe’s reassurances, but she forgets everything except somewhat common Pulmozyme immediately upon jotting it down.

“Organa,” a nurse calls half an hour after the paperwork is submitted. “The doctor’s free now, but we need you to walk our administrator through your military insurance packet first.”

“Good god, people, I’ll do it!” Poe bursts. “Just patch him up, will you? Please?”

The nurse just shrugs. His scrubs are a hue of purple so bright, it burns Rey’s retinas. Comrade lost to bureaucracy, it’s easy to follow the color down a corridor and into a standard cot-screen-chair room. Ben slumps on the high patient bed, which to him is not that high, really. Rey can tell his stoicism is wearing thin, the post-adrenaline crush and alcohol they’ve consumed both adding to impending tiredness. She feels it too.

“Take your coat off, please,” the newly arrived Doctor Holdo asks when introductions are done. Rey, who hid in a corner after a negotiated permission to stay, springs forward and takes the item away from Ben.

“It’s already ruined, but sure,” he says. He’s right: the wool is soaked and coarse where blood has dried around the collar and the lapels are a lost cause. Ben’s black sweater, revealed underneath, also sports glossy splotches down the front.

Honestly. Will the embarrassment never end? At least she didn’t think about Paige once since the fucking pipe fell. “I’ll pay for dry cleaning!” Rey tries. 

He side-eyes her. “Yeah, no. Take that money and buy a… what, a quarter of a college textbook?”

Doctor Holdo chuckles into the chart she’s reading attentively. Halfway into it, her gaze stops and flies up. A frown overshadows her piercing blue eyes. She’s an elegant woman, older and delicately-boned, with a neat curled bob that shifts when she leans her head to one side. Ben endures this scrutiny, but the familiar jaw clenching returns. Ah. She probably got to the pulmoflorid part.

Maybe insisting on staying wasn’t the best idea.

Rey quickly sweeps the room in search of any distraction to stare at while she pretends to be a ghost. Ironically, the only poster here demands the readers BE VIGILANT! with its bottom part. The top asks: “Is your friend suffering in silence?” And sandwiched between the two is a couple of laughing young people on a bench, X-ray strip across their chests. One’s lungs are clear; the other’s full of something primitive that even Rey can recognize, like daisies or chamomiles.

“It’s unrelated,” Ben assures in the meantime, sounding forceful.

“Mister Organa-”

“Look. I’ve clearly been piped in the face. It hurts. Can you _please_ help me?”

Always dutiful and a sucker for conflict resolution, Rey reports: “I think he has a concussion.”

Ben whips around to throw an accusatory glare her way. Under the peeling blood (and with it masking all his beauty marks) he seems paler than reality. “No, I don’t.”

“I think he does.”

“I know what a concussion feels like, I’ve had them before. Now is not one of those times!”

The statement goes ignored. Doctor Holdo pulls out a medical pen light, holding eye contact like a stone-cold pro, and goes to town on him. 

All attempts at convincing Ben to succumb to any kind of scanning fail spectacularly. He really seems alright, the obvious aside, so after the examination Doctor Holdo lets it go. She prepares a tray with sprays, tampons, thin fishbone-like needles, a syringe of local anesthetic, and who knows what else. While the woman gloves up, Ben unpeels tissues from the soda can he’s surely grown attached to by now. The wet paper is pink from soaking up blood and perspiration both, and lands into a waste bin heavily. Without asking, he takes an antibacterial napkin from aforementioned tray to wipe the can down, then cracks it open carefully so it doesn’t explode. 

“Here,” he says to Rey. “Get that blood sugar high so you don’t faint. This part’s unpleasant to watch.”

“There was so much wrong with that sentence,” Doctor Holdo says. “Speaking of blood, I’m taking a sample.”

“Sure.”

“This part” Rey doesn’t mind, actually: in the last four years she had to pop in for stitches several times after getting too comfortable around her tools. But she doesn’t explain, exhausted, just takes the soda. “Stop getting me drinks,” she says. “Thanks.”

“It’s fine, you can repay me later,” Ben jokes. Doctor Holdo stands up and blocks him from view; an aerosol bottle of disinfectant in her hand catches the overhead lights with a blinding spark.

Rey lifts the can for a sip. The liquid’s just barely cool by this point, and it’s a novelty Blue Milk flavor, Nabooian Shuura: tastes strange, smells even weirder. Wait… It’s not the soda, is it? She’s hugging Ben’s coat to her torso with the free hand; his warmth has saturated the fabric and is now trapped in-between. Weird smell is coming from the garment. She couldn’t catch it when they sat close before, in the alley, because the vanilla exhaust was pretty strong.

On account of everyone being preoccupied with skin sewing, no one pays attention to Rey. Her eyes slit and she inhales deeper, trying to analyze the scent. It’s colorful and light. It’s something very rarely used in perfumes, almost never in cosmetic or hygienic products. It’s not unpleasant, simply-

Floral.

**Author's Note:**

> *quote from The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver (2006). This was written after her partner of 40 years, photographer Molly Malone Cook, had died in 2005.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, pressing ♥, and leaving comments! It makes me very happy and keeps me inspired.


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